Strange start to a new year...

31st December

Hello people! How did the welcoming-the- New Year ceremonies go?

New years’ this year was different. No party hopping. No dancing. No dining out. I am bored of the routine. I wanted to do something different for a change.

So, we whipped up a gourmet Continental dinner and watched a movie. Let me tell you this, watching a movie at my place is a different experience in itself. Lounging on the sofa or sprawling on the carpet, hugging your legs to your chest, a fluffy blanket to huddle into, the movie being projected on the wall from a projector, backed up by a 2500W speakers. Sounds strange for a person who isn’t a movie buff, eh? Don’t start wondering what we were doing watching a movie on the projector. We don’t have a TV at home. And which movie did we see? The exorcist.

I have seen movies of all genres in the past – action, romantic, thrillers, chick-flicks, fantasies, fiction, sci-fi, inspired-by-true-stories and the emotional atyachars. Everything, save the horror movies. Honestly speaking, horror serials used to scare me real bad and I would spend sleepless nights for days in rows. So I quit watching them, and have never watched a horror serial or a movie since then. Remember I said I wanted to do something different this New Year’s eve. So, horror it was this time.

More than the movie, what made an impression on my mind was what the director had to say about it. He said that everybody who has seen this movie has gone back with his beliefs reinforced, be it in the devil or in the god. But, where there is god, there is also a devil.

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1st January

We found a bat in my parent’s room. Yes, I am talking of the ugly, rat-faced, leathery mammal. Flapping its wings around and zooming across the room, over my parent’s heads at 5.30 pm in the evening. It hid itself in the slits of the split-AC, turning itself into a small ball.
An omen of something horrific? Or are horror movies just getting to my head?

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2nd January

Time: 10 pm. My entire family is sitting in the living room, talking. And we get on the subjects of night animals, from jackals, foxes, bats to me. Why me? Well… my granny swears she saw one of us (my sis or me) on the phone at 3.15 am, sitting by my grand-pa’s feet, talking on the phone some 10 days back. She says it was me; she could make that out from the hair.

And if hair was the deciding factor between my sis and me, then nobody can make a mistake of recognizing which of us it was. She has got silken, long, straight tresses that are half way down her back and is generally tied up. And I on the other hand have a wild fluffy mane of curly hair which is generally left loose. There isn’t even a 1 in a 100 chance of being mistaken there. :-/

I suppose my granny was hallucinating. I venturing out of my bed at night sounds impossible. A sleeping Shivani has a striking resemblance of a dead man inside a coffin. I sleep that straight. The unnatural position of lying straight on your back comes the most naturally to me.

I don’t know what to say. I am baffled….